The State Republican Academic Korean Theater of Musical Comedy invites you to the play “The Legend of Yangban”, which will take place on April 21 at 17.00
Khan Dean wrote “The Tale of Yangban” based on the novel of the same name by Park Chi Won. It shows the beginning of the disintegration of feudal society and the emergence of a new class – the bourgeoisie. The great humanist and thinker of the 18th century Pak Chi Won sharply criticized the viciousness of Confucian scholasticism, its system of various regulations that hampered the socio-economic development of the country. He ridicules the aristocratic yangbans, their parasitic lifestyle, corruption, and moral decay. The plot of the novel is this. A Confucian yangban, reader and Talmudist, was forced to sell his yangban rank in order to repay a debt to the treasury. His title is bought by a wealthy businessman. Local rulers take an active part in this deal. For a substantial bribe, they legitimize the commoner’s yangban. Having bought the title, the enterprising businessman is faced with a whole set of prohibitions that turn him into an ordinary loafer. A failed aristocrat renounces yangban privileges and yangban rank.
Khan Dean’s play, with a significant development of the plot by the author, leaves the ideological and figurative basis of the original untouched. He artistically develops the ideas that Pa Chi Won put into his work, small in volume, but significant in content.
“Comedy reveals the social status of people in a variety of life situations, which served as the foundation for creating an integral witty satirical performance. “He truthfully,” wrote the Lenin Kichi newspaper in April 1974, “reveals arbitrariness, corruption, the decay of the yangban class, emphasizes the disenfranchised position of the working people, affirms their desire for a brighter future.”
In The Tale of Yangban, along with sharp comedic situations and elements of buffoonery and grotesque, a significant place is occupied by kwando, a narrative transmitted by recitative to musical accompaniment. This is a kind of satirical musical, sustained in the spirit of folk theater. The images of comedians, personifying the people, are used here as appropriately as possible. In revealing the social relationships of the characters, farce techniques are successfully applied. No matter how hard the feudal rulers tried to keep the people in bondage, they always found the strength to fight the oppressors. He gave birth to heroes who exposed their stupidity and ignorance, greed and cruelty, immorality and venality.
